Blizz already stated they think the droprates are too low and this will not change it so drastically they will tweak the drop chance just wait a little. Still 2 months till the release that is a huge amount of time even if it doesn't seems so
What you're not calculating into this is that patch 2.0.1, the pre-RoS patch, will hit sometime during that 2 month time. It could be a week before, it could be next week. We have no idea when. This patch is basically the RoS changes without the RoS content. So yes, there is reason for concern; they have a pretty short time to get this right, and so far, there is no indication that they are making headway in doing so.
You also have to figure in how typically, toward the end of beta development, games are generally more polished. It should be all about working out the minor kinks here very soon, within the next week or so. Hard copies of the product also have to ship soon. Don't get me wrong, all of this should be manageable within the given timeframe. The concern is that, given Blizz's track record in implementing changes, and the relative silence of blues about what's going on, RoS on release is going to be a disaster. There is a lot on their table right now, and they have a short time span to get it right. People will still play the game, no question about it. But if it is released in any shape similar to what it is now, it'll be very difficult for Blizz to attempt to redeem D3 yet again, especially after falling short on so much of the hype.
That's just it, it's not just the drop rates. I wish it was that simple, we'd be all set at that point. Rifts are unrewarding. Items are unfinished, at least I hope so; legendaries with 1 primary stat can't be finished, right? They're testing the gambling part now. Hopefully, they address splitfarming bounties. Bounties right now are the most rewarding way to farm. There is still some skill balancing/tweaking to do. There's concern about mob hps and damage, particularly in higher Torment levels. A good bit of work to do still, and time's running short.
My hope is that it can all be reasonably polished in that time, but my faith is dwindling the longer these issues go unaddressed, delayed, or flipflopped on.
It looks like that was a lot of words just to say "I'm pretty happy with RoS and most of its features, but drop rates and rewards need to be tweaked/improved." The next beta patch could tweak legendary drop rates (that before some said were way too high) up.Or not. Who knows. What we do know is that everyone seems pretty happy with the improvements to the game and all the complaints are centered around some numbers tweaking.
By all means, express your concerns and give lots of feedback, but making assumptions like:
You guys need to look at the whole picture with your changes. If you keep changing 1091823098 variables at once without seeing how each one interacts with each other, you’re not gathering any meaningful data. With all of these changes happening at once, it’s like all of the time spent researching droprates was wasted.
...is really silly and just conjecture that isn't necessary.
I think a big problem is they are allowing MMO devs and managers build this game. They are having an extremely hard time moving beyond the idea that the game must be artificially extended as much as possible. It's the mindset that they must keep people playing and paying monthly subscription fees. They do this by dangling the giant carrot of uber gear from the final boss of the latest endgame raid. That carrot has to last long enough for the next endgame raid to be added.
They don't seem to completely understand that not all ARPG players are MMO players, and those that are have those boring mechanics in their MMO already and don't want it in their ARPG.
They also don't understand that ARPG players will not put up with those mechanics in D3, their are other ARPGs out their and they seem to mostly be reacting to what the fans want.
As far as the concerns about drop rates: they have constantly maintained that during this F&F/Beta process that drop rates have been artificially inflated or decreased to test and gather data. I wouldn't worry too much, they are still developing the game and chances are high that the rates will be where a large part of the player base would like at release.
Regarding development of Rifts/Bounties/endgame: I think more of the community should focus their attention here and continue to voice ideas. There does seem to be a lot of disconnect in how each system interacts with the other. Or more aptly; its a great idea and they haven't done enough with it.
I for one love seeing the steps in the right direction of crafting and materials to craft rare/legendary items. I personally feel that material hunt to craft some great gear can be a valuable asset toward endgame longevity. I know that farming materials to be able to make a great piece of gear falls dangerously close to the MMO side of things, but it is yet another "reward" to farming.
As far as the concerns about drop rates: they have constantly maintained that during this F&F/Beta process that drop rates have been artificially inflated or decreased to test and gather data. I wouldn't worry too much, they are still developing the game and chances are high that the rates will be where a large part of the player base would like at release.
I agree with you, but I'm going to still "argue" if you will.
When they announced BoA most people thought "Well without the AH that means drop rates will go up significantly." When people got their hands on the beta, the drop rates actually seem no better, and sometimes worse, than live. So, for most people, this doesn't come off as poor tuning, but a complete "miss" in expectations.
Personally, on some level, I probably could live with BoA and STFU, but the drop rates have to be enough that the "carrot on a stick" actually works. This point is different for each person, but for me it's a pretty large bit above where it is. I don't want gambling to be the primary source of gear, that's asinine and mostly goes against the idea that's been shoved down our throats that the only way for us to have fun is killing monsters.
I'm not sure if I'm the only one, but it makes my blood boil when I kill a blue/yellow/purple and get all blue items. I don't like "guaranteed" loot, but not getting one yellow+ item from an elite almost makes me wonder why the fuck I'd waste my time killing said elite if it might only drop a blue. The risk/reward seems completely jacked up in that scenario to me.
I read the post by 'The Tias' and I am guttered...
I have been away from the game(and posting on these forums) for the last month as I wait for the expansion -playing live for paragon levels is boring. After being so excited for D3X and then reading all of the negative things the MVPs have to say on RoS.. I am sad.
Since 2009 I have been a member of Dfans. checking everyday for updates. Watching the E3 gameplay footage of D3 for the first time when Siege breaker tore apart the barbarian (literally). I said to my wife "when D3 comes out I won't have to buy another game for like 10 years until D4 comes out " :p.
I played D3 with my mates when it finally went live. Always defending D3 when those mates left and said that it was lame and that they were disappointed."Don't worry", I said. "D3 has a great base,its going to get better". "Loot 2.0 is going to fix all the issues that made you leave the first time"...
I have for the first time started to question my faith in D3. Like an indoctrinated child of Christianity for the first time stops and thinks critically about what they believe in.
After reading that post by 'The Tias' I am questioning whether I even want to buy my CE edition too. Should I give up and look to other games.. I will see what happens over the next month or so. Keeping a close eye on what the community has to say about any improvements Blizz makes to the Beta before release.. but my confidence is wavering
I have to say...I really wish people would specify what they mean by "drop rates." Not that I don't necessarily know what "drop rate," but when people aren't seeing enough legendaries in D3, they usually default to the same bloody argument..."they really need to increase drop rates." But drop rates aren't always the answer to the problem, nor is it always the problem.
Example...during one of the community's MANY whining sessions about drop rates of high end gear, a patch came out that increased monster density. The only drop rates Blizzard changed were on the little stupid scorpions and bugs people were exploiting in Act 3 (and people still complained about it, pretty sad if you ask me). Overall, they didn't "raise drop rates" like everyone begged for them to do, but in the end..."the rate at which people saw legendaries" ended up rising ever so slightly due simply to the fact that people were killing more monsters.
That being said...I think part of the issue here is that people are seriously underestimating the value of Rares. They see the potency of the updated legendaries, and imagine how marvelous it'd be to run a fair and square OP build that people can't shoot holes through ("you flipped items for gold to buy that," "you're a credit card warrior," etc.), and they salivate as they ponder all the wonderful build possibilities of the awesome legendaries...then their logic sets in, and they think "well gosh, I'll never see those in my play time with bad drop rates like this, so I don't want to play...time to cancel my pre-order/so glad I haven't pre-ordered."
Think about it, though...all in all, low drop rates of legendaries may seem really discouraging, but if people aren't seeing enough legendaries to make particular builds work, it isn't hard to gather up Veiled Crystals, Arcane Dust, Common Debris, and gold to Enchant Rares to do all sorts of stuff players want them to do to make cool builds work in the meantime while pursuing awesome legendaries.
In fact...and what I'm about to say may be bordering on curse words here, but people could even...perhaps...TRADE for particular Rares that have specific base stats on them, specifically so they can Enchant the right stats onto them to make builds work better. Granted, powerful and common builds using mostly rares may be builds that aren't going to be bothered with when people gather up a ton of legendaries....Cooldown Reduction builds, Resource Cost Reduction Builds, builds that work in Paragon Point allocation in general. But they'll still be potent enough to work on while legendaries are taking time to show up.
Sure, finding amazing WD pet legendaries to make a sweet Zoo build, the Life Regen boots, or Frostburn Gauntlets for permafreeze, or other such legendaries would be seriously awesome. I can't wait to see them all. But there are still great builds to be made in the meantime using Rares.
Honestly, I love finding Legendaries and Sets and all that stuff. And I realize Diablo is, at the very core, a loot hunt. So I get it...if a person isn't finding good enough loot, chances are their satisfaction level is pretty low. But I think part of Blizzard's MO here is to place more utility and purpose on Rares, while making high end legendaries and sets the far off goal to continue chasing after. I mean, if most of those Legendaries are as OP as they've looked, they're not mandatory. They're icing on the cake.
The big issue here is that Reaper of Souls has tons more item customization and options than D3 ever did. And "tweaking" the drop rates too much, like other people have said here, is really touchy. They can only "raise them" so much, as if they make them too high, game becomes too easy. They're handing legendaries out to anyone killing a few mobs. At least if they're low, they remain out there to be acquired. Which is why Rares are still tradeable. Legendaries can be superpowered, sometimes overpowered, but Rares can be treated like projects.
If I have a build in mind, or an Enchanting direction I want to take, and I need a Rare...I'm heading to the Trade channel, because chances are, I'll have a ton of crafting materials to do some heavy duty Enchanting. And if I get the right Rare I want, I'll be able to make the build I want. Even if Rares continue to be purchased with real money on some 3rd party site...they won't be the end all of item progression, but at least they'll be good enough to keep a player going.
I've been playing the PTR, leveling up characters from scratch and honestly I didn't really experience what Droth and the others were saying until I hit about 55. Now I get it.
There's a wall that gets hit about then and another at 60. Double the wall with the gear/loot drop rate and it's "interesting". I hear that there is another wall at 60 - 70 in Act 5. Now, I don't have an issue working on my character but this wall does need to be smoothed out. One way or another, add to the fact with the wall, gear being BoA.
Either they need to change the BoA, or they need to do something with the drop rates to make the game interesting beyond 60 (or 70 as it maybe). I think there's an experience of a pendulum swing right now, we had some pretty decent sized nerfs to a few classes that is being felt, and mob density upswing, and they say they increased the drops. I'm not sure people are seeing the 3rd part.
I still have my CE on order, and it'll take me a lot to cancel it, but......I would prefer to play D3:RoS beyond 2 weeks. I would like to play like I did when D2 was the center of my gaming universe. Maybe...that's just asking too much.
I'm not sure if I'm the only one, but it makes my blood boil when I kill a blue/yellow/purple and get all blue items. I don't like "guaranteed" loot, but not getting one yellow+ item from an elite almost makes me wonder why the fuck I'd waste my time killing said elite if it might only drop a blue. The risk/reward seems completely jacked up in that scenario to me.
Would it help if they allowed Blood Shards to drop from yellow and purple mobs? That way you have a chance to get awesome gear through spending that currency gambling?
There seem to be so many packs that a guaranteed maybe too much. What about a moderate chance of one to drop? That way you still get that "oh awesome!" feeling when one does but it's not so frequent it's expected.
Would it help if they allowed Blood Shards to drop from yellow and purple mobs? That way you have a chance to get awesome gear through spending that currency gambling?
It might help, but I think that just adds to the "gambling is the best way to find items" problem that the person in the link the OP provided discussed.
I really wouldn't want to put more emphasis on gambling as a "gearing up" mechanic... but more something to do with spare resources and spare time.
I don't want to spend all my time gambling for legs, I want to find them my self.....a much better feel of awesomeness. They said there is a chance of getting a leg gambling but we all know what "chance" mean's to Blizzard....next to zilch. Who cares if I find more legs with higher drop rate, I want to play the content, over powered or not. After all there is at least 300 odd legs, it will take a long time to find them, let alone with the right rolls. If drop rate stay the way it is I will never probably find them, just like D2, 11 years of playing and still never found most of the top gear........that sucks Donkey balls..
As I was driving home, I was thinking about loot in D3 beta. At the risk of being flamed.....I play quite a few Arpgs. One of them is Marvel Heroes, which is designed by David Brevik (a name many old school Diablo fans will know).
The items that drops in MH, are largely for your class/hero, with some variation. The bosses/elites/champions are loot pinatas of mostly blues & yellows. Occasionally cosmics & uniques would drop, if you were lucky. Beyond white & grey, there are blues, yellows - Bright yellows = cosmics = legendary Uniques = set items. In MH, you can gamble for cosmics, but not for uniques. There is a feeling that you can be working towards something though.
Uniques are almost always for your class/hero. That said, you can get them for other heroes as well as I did recently playing Wolverine getting on for Human Torch. I have felt playing D3 PTR, that lengendaries have too wide of rolls. I got a fire staff on my Wiz with Dex roll (damnit) which makes it crap. You never get rolls like that on cosmics & unqiues. The rolls are ranges of stats or a type of stats pool, but it's always something you can use for that hero because it was designed for that hero.
I'm curious if D3 devs are trying to achieve something similar. If so, there is obviously some tuning yet to be done. The concern is, unlike MH which patches every week, Blizzard tends to take a bit more time so will it be done "soon"? Is that game one of the metrics that Blizzard is observing? Makes me curious.
Agreed with general concern here. My other concern is as we get closer to the release date Blizz has got to speed up the rate they put out patches. It's hard to fine tune everything when you have a patch a month for testing, and there's only 2 months left.
I would personally like to have legendaries be super rare but with very narrow windows for rolls that should be good for you. That way when one drops it should be at the least a side-grade but more likely an upgrade. Once upon a time legendaries were the hardest items to get in the game and took a lot of time and practice to get with...well legendary fights/quests/etc... I don't know how or when the "best" items in the game were turned into candy that should drop on a regular basis. But lets be clear, the best items in the game were THE BEST ITEMS IN THE GAME, not this "sort of maybe better than a Yellow item."
IMO, they should make legendaries more legendary and more likely to be a BIS, or a side grade for alternate builds (Extra HotA damage instead of Seismic Slam). I personally don't care if they are game breaking and make farming easier, at some point you should be the biggest bad ass to ever walk the earth and own everything. However, they should only be available on the highest possible difficulty. Graded proc rates or modifiers for different levels of difficulty could work as well so higher torment legendaries have better proc chances or higher modifier/damage on the proc or both. I haven't played the beta yet, even though I have ~250paragon on ptr, so I cannot say what base modifer should be used from yellow to legenaries but i think a 1.1 to 1.2 affix/damage elevation modifier sounds reasonable to me. This would make a 3k dps yellow a 3.3-3.6k dps legendary weapon. 300 strength goes to 330-360. Again, Legendaries should be amazing. I feel like blizzard is way to hesitant to let get to being amazing bad-asses because they are too worried about being able to do an expansion. If they have to do caps on CC/AS/CritDamage then that's fine, or make them into a rating that changes your percentage that is diminshed at higher levels, ie 100 AS rating = 10% increase attack speed at 60 but is only 5% at 70. This would allow for stat inflation in future expansions. Solutions to the problem should not involve eliminating the chance of bad-assery.
How about higher difficulty reduces the roll range for affixes so there is no chance of getting the lowest possible roll? I know this would take a lot of coding to make it so items dropped have a difficulty attached to them (so you cannot get an item on T1 then go to T6 to reroll it). This way getting up and running might take a little while but it would make it so higher difficulty items are more likely to drop upgrades and be a bit of a feed forward on gear. Also, a legendary drop on T6 could be near perfect every time, even if it takes you a week to find one. They could tune this a little differenlty for Ladder vs Non-Ladder to make it harder to find all perfect items in Non-ladder but not leave ladder as a race to find the best Yellows in the game.
tl;dr: Legendaries, should be legendary with better stats and a greater chance of perfect rolls at higher difficulty. Not higher drop rates.
I am so glad I am not a poor soul that pre-ordered. Lost interest in this game a long time ago. There is so much more to life then being at the mercy of a gaming company.
If I lost half the interest in a game that most people have (i.e., viewing those who stick with it "poor souls"), I would divest myself of all ties and move on. The fact that you're still here lamenting means you're either lying about losing interest, or are crying out for help for someone to convince you to stay. Given the hard-headedness of most people on ANY forum...I'm not bothering to do either.
Also, I won't tell you to leave or stop posting (as I've already seen that anyone telling anyone else what to do or how to play gets verbally attacked), though I will encourage you to seek more positive uses for your time than hanging around a forum for a game you've allegedly lost interest in.
I wonder what the business design for D3 really is? I mean, there's no microtransactions in RoS like Hearthstone, or monthly. D1 & D2 were created by Blizzard North, which I believe had a different design philosophy than main campus, hence why likely they don't exist today.
Based on that, I would think D3 would have a different goal, so how do they justify the money? The upfront costs? So marketing = sales = money? As an example, last week both Hearthstone & D3 got a beta patch. The beta notes for Hearthstone were outlined and posted on the launcher. D3 wasn't there, from what I could tell it had to be datamined later they posted it. Felt "obvious" that the resources were allocated a certain way.
So I guess the question is, what drives Blizzard, who isn't going to get anything after the sales, to really polish this game up the way we hope it will be? Cookies?
That's just it, it's not just the drop rates. I wish it was that simple, we'd be all set at that point. Rifts are unrewarding. Items are unfinished, at least I hope so; legendaries with 1 primary stat can't be finished, right? They're testing the gambling part now. Hopefully, they address splitfarming bounties. Bounties right now are the most rewarding way to farm. There is still some skill balancing/tweaking to do. There's concern about mob hps and damage, particularly in higher Torment levels. A good bit of work to do still, and time's running short.
My hope is that it can all be reasonably polished in that time, but my faith is dwindling the longer these issues go unaddressed, delayed, or flipflopped on.
It looks like that was a lot of words just to say "I'm pretty happy with RoS and most of its features, but drop rates and rewards need to be tweaked/improved." The next beta patch could tweak legendary drop rates (that before some said were way too high) up.Or not. Who knows. What we do know is that everyone seems pretty happy with the improvements to the game and all the complaints are centered around some numbers tweaking.
By all means, express your concerns and give lots of feedback, but making assumptions like:
...is really silly and just conjecture that isn't necessary.
I think a big problem is they are allowing MMO devs and managers build this game. They are having an extremely hard time moving beyond the idea that the game must be artificially extended as much as possible. It's the mindset that they must keep people playing and paying monthly subscription fees. They do this by dangling the giant carrot of uber gear from the final boss of the latest endgame raid. That carrot has to last long enough for the next endgame raid to be added.
They don't seem to completely understand that not all ARPG players are MMO players, and those that are have those boring mechanics in their MMO already and don't want it in their ARPG.
They also don't understand that ARPG players will not put up with those mechanics in D3, their are other ARPGs out their and they seem to mostly be reacting to what the fans want.
As far as the concerns about drop rates: they have constantly maintained that during this F&F/Beta process that drop rates have been artificially inflated or decreased to test and gather data. I wouldn't worry too much, they are still developing the game and chances are high that the rates will be where a large part of the player base would like at release.
Regarding development of Rifts/Bounties/endgame: I think more of the community should focus their attention here and continue to voice ideas. There does seem to be a lot of disconnect in how each system interacts with the other. Or more aptly; its a great idea and they haven't done enough with it.
I for one love seeing the steps in the right direction of crafting and materials to craft rare/legendary items. I personally feel that material hunt to craft some great gear can be a valuable asset toward endgame longevity. I know that farming materials to be able to make a great piece of gear falls dangerously close to the MMO side of things, but it is yet another "reward" to farming.
Monkalicious: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/OptimusPrime-12194/hero/79139477
Cool story. Glad I haven't pre-orded anything, if nothing changes I won't be buying either. F U Blizzard.
I agree with you, but I'm going to still "argue" if you will.
When they announced BoA most people thought "Well without the AH that means drop rates will go up significantly." When people got their hands on the beta, the drop rates actually seem no better, and sometimes worse, than live. So, for most people, this doesn't come off as poor tuning, but a complete "miss" in expectations.
Personally, on some level, I probably could live with BoA and STFU, but the drop rates have to be enough that the "carrot on a stick" actually works. This point is different for each person, but for me it's a pretty large bit above where it is. I don't want gambling to be the primary source of gear, that's asinine and mostly goes against the idea that's been shoved down our throats that the only way for us to have fun is killing monsters.
I'm not sure if I'm the only one, but it makes my blood boil when I kill a blue/yellow/purple and get all blue items. I don't like "guaranteed" loot, but not getting one yellow+ item from an elite almost makes me wonder why the fuck I'd waste my time killing said elite if it might only drop a blue. The risk/reward seems completely jacked up in that scenario to me.
I read the post by 'The Tias' and I am guttered...
I have been away from the game(and posting on these forums) for the last month as I wait for the expansion -playing live for paragon levels is boring. After being so excited for D3X and then reading all of the negative things the MVPs have to say on RoS.. I am sad.
Since 2009 I have been a member of Dfans. checking everyday for updates. Watching the E3 gameplay footage of D3 for the first time when Siege breaker tore apart the barbarian (literally). I said to my wife "when D3 comes out I won't have to buy another game for like 10 years until D4 comes out " :p.
I played D3 with my mates when it finally went live. Always defending D3 when those mates left and said that it was lame and that they were disappointed."Don't worry", I said. "D3 has a great base,its going to get better". "Loot 2.0 is going to fix all the issues that made you leave the first time"...
I have for the first time started to question my faith in D3. Like an indoctrinated child of Christianity for the first time stops and thinks critically about what they believe in.
After reading that post by 'The Tias' I am questioning whether I even want to buy my CE edition too. Should I give up and look to other games.. I will see what happens over the next month or so. Keeping a close eye on what the community has to say about any improvements Blizz makes to the Beta before release.. but my confidence is wavering
What is going on here... Shaggy and Bleu not going all fan mode activated?... I'm impressed.
I have to say...I really wish people would specify what they mean by "drop rates." Not that I don't necessarily know what "drop rate," but when people aren't seeing enough legendaries in D3, they usually default to the same bloody argument..."they really need to increase drop rates." But drop rates aren't always the answer to the problem, nor is it always the problem.
Example...during one of the community's MANY whining sessions about drop rates of high end gear, a patch came out that increased monster density. The only drop rates Blizzard changed were on the little stupid scorpions and bugs people were exploiting in Act 3 (and people still complained about it, pretty sad if you ask me). Overall, they didn't "raise drop rates" like everyone begged for them to do, but in the end..."the rate at which people saw legendaries" ended up rising ever so slightly due simply to the fact that people were killing more monsters.
That being said...I think part of the issue here is that people are seriously underestimating the value of Rares. They see the potency of the updated legendaries, and imagine how marvelous it'd be to run a fair and square OP build that people can't shoot holes through ("you flipped items for gold to buy that," "you're a credit card warrior," etc.), and they salivate as they ponder all the wonderful build possibilities of the awesome legendaries...then their logic sets in, and they think "well gosh, I'll never see those in my play time with bad drop rates like this, so I don't want to play...time to cancel my pre-order/so glad I haven't pre-ordered."
Think about it, though...all in all, low drop rates of legendaries may seem really discouraging, but if people aren't seeing enough legendaries to make particular builds work, it isn't hard to gather up Veiled Crystals, Arcane Dust, Common Debris, and gold to Enchant Rares to do all sorts of stuff players want them to do to make cool builds work in the meantime while pursuing awesome legendaries.
In fact...and what I'm about to say may be bordering on curse words here, but people could even...perhaps...TRADE for particular Rares that have specific base stats on them, specifically so they can Enchant the right stats onto them to make builds work better. Granted, powerful and common builds using mostly rares may be builds that aren't going to be bothered with when people gather up a ton of legendaries....Cooldown Reduction builds, Resource Cost Reduction Builds, builds that work in Paragon Point allocation in general. But they'll still be potent enough to work on while legendaries are taking time to show up.
Sure, finding amazing WD pet legendaries to make a sweet Zoo build, the Life Regen boots, or Frostburn Gauntlets for permafreeze, or other such legendaries would be seriously awesome. I can't wait to see them all. But there are still great builds to be made in the meantime using Rares.
Honestly, I love finding Legendaries and Sets and all that stuff. And I realize Diablo is, at the very core, a loot hunt. So I get it...if a person isn't finding good enough loot, chances are their satisfaction level is pretty low. But I think part of Blizzard's MO here is to place more utility and purpose on Rares, while making high end legendaries and sets the far off goal to continue chasing after. I mean, if most of those Legendaries are as OP as they've looked, they're not mandatory. They're icing on the cake.
The big issue here is that Reaper of Souls has tons more item customization and options than D3 ever did. And "tweaking" the drop rates too much, like other people have said here, is really touchy. They can only "raise them" so much, as if they make them too high, game becomes too easy. They're handing legendaries out to anyone killing a few mobs. At least if they're low, they remain out there to be acquired. Which is why Rares are still tradeable. Legendaries can be superpowered, sometimes overpowered, but Rares can be treated like projects.
If I have a build in mind, or an Enchanting direction I want to take, and I need a Rare...I'm heading to the Trade channel, because chances are, I'll have a ton of crafting materials to do some heavy duty Enchanting. And if I get the right Rare I want, I'll be able to make the build I want. Even if Rares continue to be purchased with real money on some 3rd party site...they won't be the end all of item progression, but at least they'll be good enough to keep a player going.
I've been playing the PTR, leveling up characters from scratch and honestly I didn't really experience what Droth and the others were saying until I hit about 55. Now I get it.
There's a wall that gets hit about then and another at 60. Double the wall with the gear/loot drop rate and it's "interesting". I hear that there is another wall at 60 - 70 in Act 5. Now, I don't have an issue working on my character but this wall does need to be smoothed out. One way or another, add to the fact with the wall, gear being BoA.
Either they need to change the BoA, or they need to do something with the drop rates to make the game interesting beyond 60 (or 70 as it maybe). I think there's an experience of a pendulum swing right now, we had some pretty decent sized nerfs to a few classes that is being felt, and mob density upswing, and they say they increased the drops. I'm not sure people are seeing the 3rd part.
I still have my CE on order, and it'll take me a lot to cancel it, but......I would prefer to play D3:RoS beyond 2 weeks. I would like to play like I did when D2 was the center of my gaming universe. Maybe...that's just asking too much.
Monkalicious: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/OptimusPrime-12194/hero/79139477
It might help, but I think that just adds to the "gambling is the best way to find items" problem that the person in the link the OP provided discussed.
I really wouldn't want to put more emphasis on gambling as a "gearing up" mechanic... but more something to do with spare resources and spare time.
I don't want to spend all my time gambling for legs, I want to find them my self.....a much better feel of awesomeness. They said there is a chance of getting a leg gambling but we all know what "chance" mean's to Blizzard....next to zilch. Who cares if I find more legs with higher drop rate, I want to play the content, over powered or not. After all there is at least 300 odd legs, it will take a long time to find them, let alone with the right rolls. If drop rate stay the way it is I will never probably find them, just like D2, 11 years of playing and still never found most of the top gear........that sucks Donkey balls..
As I was driving home, I was thinking about loot in D3 beta. At the risk of being flamed.....I play quite a few Arpgs. One of them is Marvel Heroes, which is designed by David Brevik (a name many old school Diablo fans will know).
The items that drops in MH, are largely for your class/hero, with some variation. The bosses/elites/champions are loot pinatas of mostly blues & yellows. Occasionally cosmics & uniques would drop, if you were lucky. Beyond white & grey, there are blues, yellows - Bright yellows = cosmics = legendary Uniques = set items. In MH, you can gamble for cosmics, but not for uniques. There is a feeling that you can be working towards something though.
Uniques are almost always for your class/hero. That said, you can get them for other heroes as well as I did recently playing Wolverine getting on for Human Torch. I have felt playing D3 PTR, that lengendaries have too wide of rolls. I got a fire staff on my Wiz with Dex roll (damnit) which makes it crap. You never get rolls like that on cosmics & unqiues. The rolls are ranges of stats or a type of stats pool, but it's always something you can use for that hero because it was designed for that hero.
I'm curious if D3 devs are trying to achieve something similar. If so, there is obviously some tuning yet to be done. The concern is, unlike MH which patches every week, Blizzard tends to take a bit more time so will it be done "soon"? Is that game one of the metrics that Blizzard is observing? Makes me curious.
Agreed with general concern here. My other concern is as we get closer to the release date Blizz has got to speed up the rate they put out patches. It's hard to fine tune everything when you have a patch a month for testing, and there's only 2 months left.
I would personally like to have legendaries be super rare but with very narrow windows for rolls that should be good for you. That way when one drops it should be at the least a side-grade but more likely an upgrade. Once upon a time legendaries were the hardest items to get in the game and took a lot of time and practice to get with...well legendary fights/quests/etc... I don't know how or when the "best" items in the game were turned into candy that should drop on a regular basis. But lets be clear, the best items in the game were THE BEST ITEMS IN THE GAME, not this "sort of maybe better than a Yellow item."
IMO, they should make legendaries more legendary and more likely to be a BIS, or a side grade for alternate builds (Extra HotA damage instead of Seismic Slam). I personally don't care if they are game breaking and make farming easier, at some point you should be the biggest bad ass to ever walk the earth and own everything. However, they should only be available on the highest possible difficulty. Graded proc rates or modifiers for different levels of difficulty could work as well so higher torment legendaries have better proc chances or higher modifier/damage on the proc or both. I haven't played the beta yet, even though I have ~250paragon on ptr, so I cannot say what base modifer should be used from yellow to legenaries but i think a 1.1 to 1.2 affix/damage elevation modifier sounds reasonable to me. This would make a 3k dps yellow a 3.3-3.6k dps legendary weapon. 300 strength goes to 330-360. Again, Legendaries should be amazing. I feel like blizzard is way to hesitant to let get to being amazing bad-asses because they are too worried about being able to do an expansion. If they have to do caps on CC/AS/CritDamage then that's fine, or make them into a rating that changes your percentage that is diminshed at higher levels, ie 100 AS rating = 10% increase attack speed at 60 but is only 5% at 70. This would allow for stat inflation in future expansions. Solutions to the problem should not involve eliminating the chance of bad-assery.
How about higher difficulty reduces the roll range for affixes so there is no chance of getting the lowest possible roll? I know this would take a lot of coding to make it so items dropped have a difficulty attached to them (so you cannot get an item on T1 then go to T6 to reroll it). This way getting up and running might take a little while but it would make it so higher difficulty items are more likely to drop upgrades and be a bit of a feed forward on gear. Also, a legendary drop on T6 could be near perfect every time, even if it takes you a week to find one. They could tune this a little differenlty for Ladder vs Non-Ladder to make it harder to find all perfect items in Non-ladder but not leave ladder as a race to find the best Yellows in the game.
tl;dr: Legendaries, should be legendary with better stats and a greater chance of perfect rolls at higher difficulty. Not higher drop rates.
edit: typo
If I lost half the interest in a game that most people have (i.e., viewing those who stick with it "poor souls"), I would divest myself of all ties and move on. The fact that you're still here lamenting means you're either lying about losing interest, or are crying out for help for someone to convince you to stay. Given the hard-headedness of most people on ANY forum...I'm not bothering to do either.
Also, I won't tell you to leave or stop posting (as I've already seen that anyone telling anyone else what to do or how to play gets verbally attacked), though I will encourage you to seek more positive uses for your time than hanging around a forum for a game you've allegedly lost interest in.
Have a good day and keep the faith.
I wonder what the business design for D3 really is? I mean, there's no microtransactions in RoS like Hearthstone, or monthly. D1 & D2 were created by Blizzard North, which I believe had a different design philosophy than main campus, hence why likely they don't exist today.
Based on that, I would think D3 would have a different goal, so how do they justify the money? The upfront costs? So marketing = sales = money? As an example, last week both Hearthstone & D3 got a beta patch. The beta notes for Hearthstone were outlined and posted on the launcher. D3 wasn't there, from what I could tell it had to be datamined later they posted it. Felt "obvious" that the resources were allocated a certain way.
So I guess the question is, what drives Blizzard, who isn't going to get anything after the sales, to really polish this game up the way we hope it will be? Cookies?